


Beyond the Cell

by Dustypearlsandjewelleryboxes (Emberbrushiebrushie)



Category: Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:17:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emberbrushiebrushie/pseuds/Dustypearlsandjewelleryboxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for a prompt on the Man of Steel Kinkmeme.</p>
<p>"The government found the ship before the Kents or they discovered its existence and tracked it to the Kent farm when Clark was still a baby. Kal-El is raised as an alien specimen in a lab. Though he eventually grows impervious to the experimentation, as a Kryptonian baby adjusting to the atmosphere he was highly vulnerable and the development of his heightened senses was unfortunately a source of great curiosity.</p>
<p>When Zod and his compatriots arrive and demand Kal-El, the U.S. government hands over a mostly passive lab-rat rather than Superman. How the Kryptonians react to this and what happens next is up to the author."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You need a break, I know, it gets intense”  
Dr. Hamilton nudged her elbow, trying not to spill a mug of black coffee over the various switches and monitors. Lois smiled and carefully took the drink, pausing before the ridge touched her lips.  
“You don’t think he’s…”  
“What?”  
“Telepathic, do you?”  
A muted chuckle from her senior was drowned under hot chocolate. The Doctor never drank coffee unless there was a containment breach.  
Before them was the primary containment cell, in which the Subject was kept.  
Just over nine years ago, an extra-terrestrial object crashed into the fields belonging to a ‘Kent Farm’ in Kansas. Extraction of the aircraft and subject had gone smoothly; or at least that’s what her father had told her on the day she had been recruited. The Kent’s never asked any questions about the intimidating government officials and the clean-up crews who were there to retrieve the remains of a satellite; and Smallville was on its merry way. Lois Lane had joined the containment project not long after her graduation at the University of Metropolis; the day her father showed up and threatened her with-

The screen damn near cracked!  
The subject flung himself towards them, causing a fracture in the reinforced two-way mirror. He was running around the cell, hands over his ear, screaming with his eyes senselessly rolling around.  
“Is he having seizure?!” she screeched, bolting towards the containment cell door.  
Dr. Hamilton grabbed her arm and spun her around.  
“You can’t go in there” he whispered.   
And he was right. The subject could smash her into pulp. She wanted to at least do something, but opening that door at a time like this could bring the world to an end. There was no way of knowing what would happen, and no direct protocol to get her alive out of a potentially class-five containment breach.  
By the time her heart-rate had settled, guards had turned up with their tranquilizer and had already gone into the cell; shooting the boy and allowing the drugs to do their work.  
The Doctor and Lois shared no more jokes for the rest of their shift, not when a nine-year-old child lay there in a padded cell with darts still in his neck. The shift report was written up and sent onto General Swanwick.

That night, Lois told herself that the coffee was keeping her awake.


	2. Chapter 2

Being in the car made him sick, numerous times.   
There were no windows, and for a few seconds before entering the vehicle, the tall ceiling was the brightest colour he had ever seen in his life. The woman sat next to him (she was called ‘Lois’) explained to him that it was something called “the Sky” and that the colour was called “Blue”. The words sounded…weird, but the blue sky was something he would never forget.  
The shaking went on for a long time, during which Lois rubbed his back and wiped his chin. She talked about how it was journey to a special place, and that ‘they’ needed his help to solve a puzzle. He told her that he had solved all the puzzles a long time ago, and that ‘they’ didn't want to give him any more.  
“This is the biggest puzzle yet” she smiled.

In the far off past, he remembers the day his head nearly exploded. Reality had gone from being a white cell to the entire planet. He could hear everything and see everything. He could hear the cries of strange animals and see through walls and floors. The guards came in and everything turned black after the pain hit his neck. Afterwards, he taught himself to focus. If he didn’t, he would have just spent all his time crying and lost in the chaos.  
He listened to the voices of all the people in the building around him and learned so many new words. They couldn’t understand why, after his ‘seizure’, that his grasp of English had so suddenly improved. Before long, he was standing up to the mirror and asking them what the difference between ‘night’ and ‘day’ was.  
The people behind the mirror wouldn't answer; they never did.  
He listened to these words, and yet never understood most of them. They were used in certain ways in regards to other sentences and words; but that was all he had to go by.

The car’s rumbling slowed down to a crunching halt, and the side-door opened. He looked over to Lois, who nodded in response. She unfastened his seat-belt and climbed over onto white ground to help him get out.   
Outside was dark, and open. There weren't any walls. He looked up at the ceiling and felt like he was going to fall into the blue, he’d fall up there forever-  
“Hey” someone gently squeezed his hand. Lois was here. She wouldn't let anything bad happen, she never did.  
“Can you come with me? We’re just going to walk for a little while”  
“…Yes” was his reply, the same as any other.  
There were lots of angry-looking people around them as they headed towards the ‘Glacier’, as Lois called it. The air was cold and it moved quickly across the skin on his face. When he breathed out, there was a white mist that came out from his nose and mouth. If he left his mouth open for too long, it tasted dry and cold.  
They were walking through ‘snow’, which was water that was so cold that it changed its state from liquid to solid. Apparently this was a purely physical change, as opposed to a chemical change, but he didn't know what Lois had meant by that. It didn't take long for them to reach a hole that had been made into the Glacier.  
He didn't want to go in, but Lois assured him that it was completely safe and that the water wasn't going to change form on them. Inside, lights had been set up and people with machines are pocketed into little, carved-out rooms. The corridors, unlike the ones back home, were partly see-through (even with his focused sight). As their group went further and further in; it became colder and colder, and at the coldest and darkest point, they stumbled out into a huge chamber that had a strange metal object leering out of the walls.

“This is the puzzle?”  
“This is it, oh, and watch your step”  
Although he was nearly the same height as Lois, unlike her he found it difficult to leap about as she did. Most of his life had been spent sitting down, and whenever his hips or legs hurt, he would have to pace up and down in his cell. He never wanted to go back there now. He had seen the sky and saw the colour blue. He felt the snow crunch beneath his feet. He had held the warm hand of Lois, and seen his own breath flitter in the air before him. The cell was home, but this was jump into the outside world that he didn't want to end any time soon. He'd never sleep again after all this.  
Lois and one of the guards helped him down the icy slope which led to a small clearing beneath the protruding object.  
They walked under it until they came to a hole that led to the inside, and he had an idea as to what the ‘puzzle’ was all about.  
“I want you to go inside, and see if there’s anything happening in there” she asserted.  
“Are you coming with me?”  
She smiled and shook her head.  
“Last time I went in, I didn't get very far…” she slid off her glove to reveal a healed scorch mark around her wrist “…I slipped”.  
She wasn't telling the truth, but what else could have caused such an injury? And it wasn't like he could refuse either, otherwise the guards would beat him.  
“What do I have to look for, Lois?”  
“Anything you can find, or take with you”  
“Is there a time limit?”  
“No, we’ll be out here waiting for you. If you get hurt, I want you to come straight back; am I clear?”  
“Yes” he muttered.  
One of the guards lifted him towards the opening, and he clambered inside.

More corridors.   
It seemed like his life was a long corridor, walking and walking and never really reaching the place that he was supposed to be.  
It looked metal, but the layout was unlike anything he had seen before. He couldn't look through the walks or floors either. He moved forwards a distant clicking sound, deciding upon his direction.   
Walking through the strange place brought about the most flooding feeling of being alone, not just being separated from Lois and the rest of the group, but it were as if he would never find his way back and would wander around forever.  
That was nonsense of course; he had a rope attached to his coat that provided a trail towards escape, should he need it.  
“INTRUDER DETECTED” a voice boomed behind him.  
He whipped around to see some kind of metal…thing floating in the air. It had a bumpy, moving screen and long tendrils. He made to run, but the thing darted forward and wrapped one of it’s tendrils around his wrists. His legs kicked and struggled, but they weren't strong enough; this thing was holding him firmly in place.  
And then it let go.  
“Wh-What are you?”  
It didn't answer, it simply flew away and zipped around a corner out of sight.  
A few moments after, more lights came on and Clark decided enough was enough when he saw that his rope had vanished. Gone. He felt the back of his coat and it had been cut. The guards must have pulled it back.  
The place he was in was one long corridor, he hadn't walked past any rooms; so there was the plan. He turned back and ran as fast as his legs would take him (which turned out to be surprisingly fast), but another one of those things flew up to his face; causing him to crash into a nearby wall. The thing flew away once more, but the wall had somehow turned into metallic water! He had rebounded off it, and watched it bounce with ripples and waves in rhythm with his impact. This place didn't make any sense.

His feet took him to the way out, back to Lois. He walked with her right out of the chamber, and out of the glacier into the cold, blasting wind.  
He wanted to go home and sleep.  
The guards made sure of the latter once he began to approach the car.

There was that comforting, dark silence, and once more he awoke to the barely-lit containment cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Kal wasn't raised with a name, nor was he provided with an environment in which to nurture as solid grasp of the english vocabulary; I have attempted to show this through a rather simplistic POV for him.
> 
> Everything you read is un-beta'd, and as such comments and kudos are most welcome :)


	3. Chapter 3

“The signal is ready”  
The General took a step forwards upon the observation deck, watching the planet down below. It was much younger than Krypton, as was its Sun. Vast oceans of blue supported stretches of greens, browns and yellows. White polar caps, and clouds swam across the atmosphere.   
It was world so full of potential, and so full of life. Unfortunately its inhabitants, the self-titled ‘Human Race’ seemed oblivious to the most obvious and clear of conclusions; they preferred to cling onto their tribes and war with one another, ignoring the most mortal of issues. It was the same tale that Zod had lived through before.  
“Faora” his Sub-Commander straightened her posture “Relay the message, immediately”  
“Yes, General”  
She turned to set onwards to her work; the others taking the cue to leave their workstations and to clear the deck, leaving their leader to await the oncoming day, and the arrival of their kin.  
-  
He had fallen asleep three times since the journey to the glacier.  
Lois hadn’t turned up for any shifts, and when he went to the mirror to ask where she was, Dr. Hamilton told him that she had been “given a temporary leave of absence” and said no more.  
On the ‘phone’, someone had told Hamilton that his colleague seemed to “have become somewhat fond of the subject”.  
Perhaps it was his fault. If he had found something inside that metal maze, then maybe Lois would still be here.

Ping  
All the lights in the ceiling turned off. It wasn’t right, the people always let him know when they were going to turn the lights off. In the room across the mirror, the lights had gone off too. All around the building, the lights were off; but the computer screens were still on.  
A moment of silence in the dark, no-one was moving.  
Dr. Hamilton tried to use a device, perhaps a phone to contact the other people, but it wasn’t working.  
A cracking sound shot through all the computers in the building, it was too much. The noise was rising, a terrible whirring and groaning that was echoed across the world. Words flashed across screens, but he couldn’t read them. A distant voice boomed throughout the planet “You are not alone”, over and over.  
“My name is General Zod” the deep, commanding voice was clear now; linked with an image that might have been a mask breaking through static “I have come from a world far from yours. I have journeyed across an ocean of stars to reach you”   
‘This has to be another puzzle’ he thought. Maybe they were just making him think that this was taking place everywhere, when it actually wasn’t.  
“For some time your world has sheltered one of my citizens. I request that you return this individual to my custody. For reasons unknown, he has chosen to keep his existence a secret from you. He will have made efforts to blend in. He will look like you, but he is not one of you.”

-

The message was broadcasting everywhere, even on Lois’ first ever (and broken) cassette player.  
“To those of you who may know of his current location; the fate of your planet rests in your hands”  
This was about the subject, so he wasn’t the only one? Or perhaps he was the vanguard, but if so, why would his ‘people’ demand his return in such a way? ‘Must be a show of Authority-‘ she thought before the final sentence was declared.  
“To Kal-El, I say this. Surrender within 23 hours, or watch this world suffer the consequences”  
Kalel? No, it had a pause in the middle; Kal El.   
The subject finally had a name.  
“Too bad it means ‘the end of the world’” she sighed, falling onto her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8 kudos and comments? I wasn't expecting that!  
> Thank you all for reading and for enjoying the story :)


End file.
